Once again, those malefactors of the bane (MOB) raised my ire, although only to a degree. This time, I found myself somewhat benefiting from spammers' use of my domain name.

I recently began receiving many, many "delivery failure" notices from various e-mail services regarding messages I never sent. Of course, these were returned to bogus user IDs @ roosl.com, used by the MOB in their never ending battle for lies, injustice, and (abuse of) the American way.

My e-mailfilter now has rules to delete all delivery failure notices from my server. Of course, this means I don't know if anyone I actually care about and sent something to has a problem. Oh, well. I also don't get the more prevalent bogus failures, which I really don't care about.

It seems that some of the recipients of the spam are visiting Roosl.com, perhaps out of curiosity. Here, of course, they'll find cool stuff, right? As well, they easily find my notice regarding spam and fraud. Hence, a small thanks to the MOB for driving a few new visitors to my site!

This section is where I usually put my two cents, and I welcome and appreciate your opinions and feedback. Please don't hesitate to let me know what you think: About this newsletter, the website, or anything else! Send me your comments, questions or rants. If you want, I'll publish your "two cents" in an upcoming issue!

Visitors familiar with the gallery know about M.C. Escher and how his work has influenced much of mine. This time, I took one of his lithographs from 2D to a faithful reproduction in a new 3D scene. Check out "Klimmen en Dalen".

A second addition to the compendium is "Streetnight", a scene outside the familiar entrance to the gallery.

I've received a few great requests for enhancements to Roosl's Mail Filter and Roosl Text. Some are in work, while others (always considered) are on my "to do" list. If you have Roosl Text, which is currently freeware, and I hear from you, you'll get a free license to the next major release, which will be upgraded to licensed shareware.

Check for updates to the Mail Filter, and other downloads you may have. Of course, if you have purchased a license for sharware, you get notified of new releases. As well, if I hear from you (feedback is good) about any of my titles, I'll add you to my list of users and you'll receive update notices, too!

Did you know... Some of Roosl's downloads are available at WinSite archives? In fact, some downloads from my software page are actually via WinSite archives, from where almost 700 downloads have occured.

Flash, one of Macromedia's many products, is widely used on the web and very popular these days. Time was, when we all had 28k dialup (or even 56k for some Flash sites), most of us didn't want to tolerate such things as Flash or Shockwave.

If your browser didn't already have the plugin or ActiveX controls, the website would ask you to download Flash player before you could view their content. Today, the majority of clients (over 90% according to Macromedia) have the player installed. As well (and maybe one reason for the aforementioned), more of us have high speed broadband internet access. For the majority still using dialup, they are better too, and the newer Flash player is improved. The current Flash player version 7 is even faster than version 6 (Flash player is free).

Recently, I had a request from a potential client that I addressed with a Java applet. It was good, and it addressed the request, per se. However, the animation quality, audio (.au voice) and two minute run time resulted in a very large project. Since the project was initially for internal use, it was OK, but for use on the client's website? Not a good idea. The download time for a 56k dialup visitor would have been almost 3 minutes.

That project brought me back to one of the recently added items on my wishlist. So, long story short, I am now evaluating Flash 2004 as a potential addition to my toy -er- tool box. It will take some time to learn, but I plan Flash as a wonderful new tool for great interactive web animations and a resource for client projects (better suited for some than Java).

Watch for future news regarding Flash at Roosl's.

If you're not familiar with the book Stranger in a Strange Land, the word "grok" means to completely understand. God groks. Only He really comprehends... What's going on in your life and mine... what affects our actions and attitude... Why...

Wonder: If we will try to "grok" one another, perhaps we would learn to better understand and accept others as well as ourselves, and to be more concious of our own attitude.

Might that bring peace to our days, appreciation to our relationships, and brotherly love to our lives?

Forever grateful to God for His given blessings, I'll never say enough about what His presence and meaning are to me in my life...

God, I pray I may better understand myself and how I am in control of my attitude. I pray I may better understand others, and how I am not in control of their attitude. I pray we each learn to "grok".